Skip to footer

Retired NBA Finals MVPs: What are they doing now?

Here’s a sports prediction almost certain to come true: The MVP of this year’s NBA Finals between Miami and Oklahoma City will eventually be enshrined in the Basketball Hall of Fame in Springfield, Mass., basketball’s birthplace.

To see why this isn’t going out on a limb, just check the record. Since 1969, when the league first selected the Most Valuable Player of the Finals, only two MVPs have not made the hall (JoJo White of the Boston Celtics and Dennis Johnson of the Seattle SuperSonics).

Another safe prediction is that even after retirement, most former playoff MVPs will keep their hand in the game, at least to some degree. Virtually all do.

As for why superstars have a virtual lock on the MVP in basketball more than the other major pro team sports, it’s all pretty simple, really. The stars get a lion’s share of the playing time during a minimum of four games in which they are constantly leaving their mark on the proceedings.

By the way, one NBA Finals MVP is playing in the current series: Miami’s Dwayne Wade. The other still-active players who’ve been MVPs and will no doubt be voted into the Hall of Fame after their retirement are Dirk Nowitzki, Kobe Bryant, Paul Pierce, Tony Parker, Tim Duncan, and Chauncey Billups.

Find out what former Finals MVPs are doing today, as near as can be determined:

Jeff Roberson/AP
The NBA Finals logo is seen on the basketball court as the Oklahoma City Thunder team runs through drills during practice, Monday, June 11, in Oklahoma City.

Moses Malone, Philadelphia 76ers

  • By Ross Atkin Staff

1983 MVP – Philadelphia swept Los Angeles, 4-0

What he’s doing: Malone is the Howard Hughes of retired NBA superstars, a person who seems to steer clear of the public limelight. He was most recently reported to be living in Sugarland, Texas, a Houston suburb.

1 of 20
Mark Sappenfield
Editor

Dear Reader,

About a year ago, I happened upon this statement about the Monitor in the Harvard Business Review – under the charming heading of “do things that don’t interest you”:

“Many things that end up” being meaningful, writes social scientist Joseph Grenny, “have come from conference workshops, articles, or online videos that began as a chore and ended with an insight. My work in Kenya, for example, was heavily influenced by a Christian Science Monitor article I had forced myself to read 10 years earlier. Sometimes, we call things ‘boring’ simply because they lie outside the box we are currently in.”

If you were to come up with a punchline to a joke about the Monitor, that would probably be it. We’re seen as being global, fair, insightful, and perhaps a bit too earnest. We’re the bran muffin of journalism.

But you know what? We change lives. And I’m going to argue that we change lives precisely because we force open that too-small box that most human beings think they live in.

The Monitor is a peculiar little publication that’s hard for the world to figure out. We’re run by a church, but we’re not only for church members and we’re not about converting people. We’re known as being fair even as the world becomes as polarized as at any time since the newspaper’s founding in 1908.

We have a mission beyond circulation, we want to bridge divides. We’re about kicking down the door of thought everywhere and saying, “You are bigger and more capable than you realize. And we can prove it.”

If you’re looking for bran muffin journalism, you can subscribe to the Monitor for $15. You’ll get the Monitor Weekly magazine, the Monitor Daily email, and unlimited access to CSMonitor.com.

Subscribe to insightful journalism

You've read  of  free articles. Subscribe to continue.